You may like to read this blog post from the West Australian and also read Google’s view on the subject.

You may also wish to express your views at Getup: http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet&id=892

The lawsuit was filed by EMG Technology LLC on Monday in the US District Court in Tyler, Texas. EMG was founded by Mr Gottfurcht and is based in Los Angeles.

The lawsuit alleges that technology the iPhone uses to navigate and display websites specifically designed for small phone screens infringes on a patent obtained in October which was assigned to EMG.

Apple has declined to comment on the lawsuit.

I’m back on board now, and normal service will be resumed ASAP. In fact, there should be some exciting times ahead, as we are hoping to make some changes that will greatly improve the ‘community’ side of things here. IT Resource is a great source of information for many people, but we want to build on that and add some Forum sections which will allow for a much greater level of interactivity and allow people to post questions (and answers) more easily.

I will keep you informed of developments on that front, and in the meantime will resume normal posting.

thanks
IT Resource

Squid is a popular open source web proxy server and web caching software. It has a wide variety of uses, from speeding up a web server by caching repeated requests, to caching web, DNS and other network lookups for groups of people sharing network resources and (which is of most interest to us for the purposes of this post) by aiding security via traffic filtering. It was originally inteneded for Unix/Linux but has been ported to a number of platforms.

Squid has powerful ACL (access control list). The primary use of the ACL system is to implement simple access control. This can be used to deny a user from accessing particular site.

In order to do this we have to edit the Squid configuration file.

e.g. # vi /etc/squid/squid.conf

Search for `Access Controls’ and append the following lines (in this example we are blocking access to ‘nastysite.com’):
acl badsite dstdomain .nastysite.com
http_access deny badsite

Save and close the file, and then restart Squid:
# /etc/init.d/squid restart

 If required, you can specify more than one site to be blocked:
acl badsite dstdomain .nastysite.com  .anothernastysite.com
http_access deny badsite

You can also use regex expressions to block access to more than one website. for example,  if you would like to deny access for any sites where the URL contains the word “twitter”, use the following ACL lines:
acl badsitegroup url_regex -i twitter
http_access deny badsitegroup

More information on Squid commands can be found at: http://wiki.squid-cache.org/FrontPage

Examples of Ping

Windows
ping google.com

Pinging google.com [64.223.167.99] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.223.167.99: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=57
Reply from 64.223.167.99: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=57
Reply from 64.223.167.99: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=57
Reply from 64.223.167.99: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 64.223.167.99:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 37ms, Maximum = 75ms, Average = 47ms

Linux
ping -c 5 itresource.com.au

PING itresource.com.au(203.88.118.177) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=36.6 ms
64 bytes from kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=36.5 ms
64 bytes from kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=37.0 ms
64 bytes from kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=36.9 ms
64 bytes from kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): icmp_seq=5 ttl=57 time=36.6 ms

— itresource.com.au ping statistics —
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 9000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 35.918/36.638/37.106/0.400 ms

Mac OS X
ping -c 10 itresource.com.au

PING kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 203.88.118.177: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=40.019 ms
64 bytes from 203.88.118.177: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=47.502 ms
64 bytes from 203.88.118.177: icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=43.208 ms
64 bytes from 203.88.118.177: icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=50.851 ms
64 bytes from 203.88.118.177: icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=46.556 ms

— ping statistics —
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 40.019/45.575/50.851/3.588 ms

Useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/ping.htm

The company spent much of yesterday’s opening keynote showcasing the iPhone’s business credentials and development tools.

Apple said that the upcoming iPhone 2.0 software package will feature several tools aimed primarily at business users.

The update will add support for Microsoft Exchange and Cisco Secure VPN connection security, as well as support for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and Apple’s iWork office suite.

Apple will charge US$9.99 for the update for iPod Touch owners, but the software will be free for existing iPhone users.

The company hopes that the new features will broaden the iPhone’s appeal with a business community that has been reluctant to adopt the device.

Apple claims that the beta release of iPhone 2.0 has already been tested by 35 per cent of the companies on the Fortune 500 list.

Apple has also added a mobile package of its own as an answer to Microsoft’s Exchange platform.

Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing at Apple, described the web-based MobileMe service as “Exchange for the rest of us “.

The package will include push-based email, calendar and contact information for the iPhone, Mac OS and Windows platforms.

When one device in a user’s account is updated with new contact or mail information, the data is pushed to all connected computers and iPhones, allowing one device to synchronise with others and ensure updated and accurate data.

Apple plans to replace its .Mac service with MobileMe, which will have the same $99 annual subscription fee as its predecessor.

Mobile Me and iPhone 2.0 will be available in early July.

Unveiled by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the opening of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WDC) in San Francisco, the new 3G version of the popular iPhone will allow faster Internet access for both consumers and business users alike.

“We’ve learned so much with the first iPhone,” Jobs told a packed audience at WDC. “We’ve taken what we’ve learned and more and created the iPhone 3G; and it’s beautiful.”

The 3G iPhone will include built-in GPS for real-time mapping and location-based services. It will also feature new iPhone’s 2.0 software that will provide support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, allowing users to send and receive Microsoft Exchange email.

“We’ve done it. You can push email to Microsoft Exchange,” Jobs said.

Apple said the 3G iPhone’s battery life will deliver 10 hours of talk time on 2G networks and 5 hours using 3G, with up to 5 to 6 hours of web browsing, up to 7 hours for video playback and up to 24 hours for audio playback.

Both Vodafone and Optus announced that the 3G iPhone would be locally available on July 11. While both carriers declined to announce pricing details, Vodafone said it would release the 3G iPhone on both prepay and contract price plans.

And although pricing for the 3G iPhone has been released in the US, (the base model 3G iPhone will sell for $US199 with 8GB of memory, the 16GB model will retail for $US299), it’s hard to gauge local pricing as Apple has typically increased pricing by 20 to 30 percent for its products in Australia.

Eager customers in Australia can pre-register for their iPhones from Vodafone at iphone.vodafone.com.au, or from Optus at www.optusiphone.com.au.

iTunes U makes audio and video curriculum from lecturers available for students to sync with their iPods or iPhones, so they can carry learning materials anywhere they go and use them on their own time.

The first Australian and New Zealand schools to offer iTunes U include Griffith University, Swinburne University of Technology, the Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, the University of NSW, the University of Western Australia and Otago University.

They join 300 universities worldwide who are already using the program, including UCLA and University College London.

Griffith University Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Sue Spence said iTunes U simply provides faculty with means to engage students in a way that both appeals to them and fits in nicely with their increasingly hectic schedules.

“As students increasingly become more mobile and seek to combine their study with work, family and other commitments, it has become essential to deliver flexible learning,” she said.

Weighing in at less than 5 ounces, the My Passport Studio portable drives make it easy to securely carry office files, thousands of songs, videos or photos and back up a Macintosh laptop using Apple Time Machine backup software utility. With an elegant silver metallic finish that perfectly complements other Mac products, these portable drives feature a shock-resistant enclosure to provide protection from the bumps and jars of everyday life on-the-go. Ultra portable, these drives are USB-bus powered which eliminates the need for an external power adapter.

“We designed the My Passport Studio portable drives to work seamlessly with Apple’s Time Machine, making this drive an ideal storage solution for creative pros on-the-go who require high performance storage to back up and carry their massive amounts of digital content,” said Jim Welsh, vice president and general manager of WD’s branded products and consumer electronics groups. “This sleek personal storage device with a faster FireWire interface and Mac-formatting is exactly the storage solution our Mac customers have been clamoring for ever since we introduced the first WD Passport portable USB drive.”

Unique features of the new My Passport Studio portable drives include:

• formatted HFS+, Journaled for Mac compatibility;
• FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces;
• capacity gauge that enables users to know at-a-glance how much space is available;
• works with Apple Time Machine backup feature included in Apple’s Leopard operating system;
• USB powered4;
• industry-leading 5-year limited warranty; and,
• elegant silver metallic finish that perfectly complements other Mac products.

Source: Western Digital – Product Information/Specifications

Software makers such as Parallels have been making Mac OS X virtualisation software for some time, but Sun is the first to release an open-source virtualisation product for the platform.

Virtualisation technology allows several operating systems to run at the same time on a single physical host. VirtualBox runs as an application on a host operating system, on top of which various guest OSs can execute.

Source & More Info: ZDNet